This is just sad. It was an accident. The cyclist should not have raced through a downhill intersection under a yellow light with pedestrians waiting to cross. The pedestrian should not have stepped off the curve until the "walk" sign actually lit up, even with no cars oncoming. Convicting the cyclist of manslaughter is not helping anything.

"Chris Bucchere has been cycling all his life and even taught classes in bicycle safety. That’s why, his defense attorney said Thursday, Bucchere would not have violated any road rules last year when he struck and killed a pedestrian in the Castro district."

Bucchere's case gained more attention after Hui's death when it was revealed that, on the day of the collision, he wrote about the accident on an online cycling forum. "The light turned yellow as I was approaching the intersection, but I was already way too committed to stop," he wrote.

This is just sad. It was an accident. The cyclist should not have raced through a downhill intersection under a yellow light with pedestrians waiting to cross. The pedestrian should not have stepped off the curve until the "walk" sign actually lit up, even with no cars oncoming. Convicting the cyclist of manslaughter is not helping anything.

Kind of reminds me how fired up people get when a driver with a clean record kills a cyclist... of course a conviction won't solve anything but that's a pretty severe thing to do, to kill somebody. If the pedestrian were young and healthy would he have died? Probably not (I really don't know, I assume age and frailty had something to do with this as well).

I see people step off the curb immediately when the light turns and it's crazy! Of course, I've been hit by a car while I was in a cross walk so perhaps I have a different outlook on being a pedestrian.

Kill someone with a car, it's misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter. Kill someone with a bike and it's a felony? What's the difference?

Not saying this is what I believe, but it is much easier to kill someone with a car; therefore there is a general perception that one would have to do something pretty stupid & reckless to kill someone with a bicycle.
Wasn't there some footage entered as evidence? That could have pushed it into felony territory.

Originally Posted by EvilWeasel

Well, if you are gonna carry a snapped frame all the way home. It might as well be light weight carbon fiber.

Kill someone with a car, it's misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter. Kill someone with a bike and it's a felony? What's the difference?

The difference is behavior before the accident. If you change lanes without checking or make a left turn in front of a bicyclist/motorcyclist, it's misdemeanor. If you kill someone after running a red light or while traveling at 30 above speed limit, that's called "gross negligence" and that's what changes misdemeanor into felony.

They are saying that the cyclist was riding recklessly and with gross negligence, hence the eyewitnesses reporting him running stop signs.

Wasn't there some footage entered as evidence? That could have pushed it into felony territory.

There is a surveillance tape showing the accident. There was one newspaper account reporting that they spent some time in the court going over the tape with the microscope. The expert for the prosecution looked at it and reported that the cyclist ran the red light, the defense attorney looked at the same tape and concluded that the light was still yellow. As far as I could tell, the actual video is not available online.

Everyone will interpret things differently but what was he thinking posting the following after the accident:

“In closing, I want to dedicate this story to my late helmet. She died in heroic fashion today as my head slammed into the tarmac... may she die knowing that because she committed the ultimate sacrifice, her rider can live on and ride on. Can I get an amen? Amen.”

You normally don't expect that you can kill or even badly hurt the person just by knocking them down with a bicycle. He himself was knocked out by the collision and the first thing he remembered was being loaded into the ambulance. If I were in his place, I'd probably assume that crashing at 30 mph hurt me more than falling to the ground hurt the pedestrian.

If not for his helmet, we wouldn't be having this discussion right now because there would have been two dead people instead of one.

I understand what you're saying hamster but I wouldn't speak or write about a "helmet dying in heroic fashion" (which he wrote after the accident) while the pedestrian was in the hospital. It shows a lack of sensitivity to the events that took place. And he did know the pedestrian was in the hospital as the following sentence makes clear.

In fairness in the same post he did write "I really hope he ends up ok".

Originally Posted by hamster

You normally don't expect that you can kill or even badly hurt the person just by knocking them down with a bicycle. He himself was knocked out by the collision and the first thing he remembered was being loaded into the ambulance. If I were in his place, I'd probably assume that crashing at 30 mph hurt me more than falling to the ground hurt the pedestrian.

If not for his helmet, we wouldn't be having this discussion right now because there would have been two dead people instead of one.

I understand what you're saying hamster but I wouldn't speak or write about a "helmet dying in heroic fashion" (which he wrote after the accident) while the pedestrian was in the hospital. It shows a lack of sensitivity to the events that took place. And he did know the pedestrian was in the hospital as the following sentence makes clear.

I don't know if I would speak or write anything like that, all I can say is that the guy just had a close brush with death and he was saved by the helmet. That may have influenced his choice of words.

This is a common problem in news & politics. They omit what could be very pertinent information and present only the most damning (or in this place, pretty callous) snippets.
I'd be interested in seeing the entire blog post, because that quote by itself makes him sound like a self-important deuche.

Originally Posted by EvilWeasel

Well, if you are gonna carry a snapped frame all the way home. It might as well be light weight carbon fiber.

This is a common problem in news & politics. They omit what could be very pertinent information and present only the most damning (or in this place, pretty callous) snippets.
I'd be interested in seeing the entire blog post, because that quote by itself makes him sound like a self-important deuche.

You normally don't expect that you can kill or even badly hurt the person just by knocking them down with a bicycle.

From what I recall, by his own online account on that message board, he laid the bike down on its side going well over 20mph, after bombing down a hill, when he realized a collision was imminent. I'm guessing the pedestrian in his 70's had his feet swept out from under him and suffered a serious head injury which could lead to death at that age. In that same online account he did actually say he hoped the guy was alright and clearly didn't think the man's injuries were serious enough to be fatal.

Posting his account of what happened on that message board is probably what lead the prosecutor to charge him with a felony. All a prosecutor has to do is use the guys own account of what happened and a jury is going to convict him (if he doesn't take a plea deal.) Purely from a legal perspective it was very stupid of him to post about it on the internet IMO.

Apparently, not a very good one. He was clearly operating a vehicle on the street without the due care and control required for the conditions. He entered an intersection under the caution light and yet did not excercise any. He was aware of the potential for collision at that intersection as any driver or rider should be. That is the responsibility of the driver or rider. If he wasn't he should not have been traveling at that rate of speed.

The use of any road is not a right. It's a responsibility. Poor cycling skills or poor driving skills should not be argued as an excuse to kill pedestrians lest we lower the bar legally and really give our rights away.

You normally don't expect that you can kill or even badly hurt the person just by knocking them down with a bicycle. He himself was knocked out by the collision and the first thing he remembered was being loaded into the ambulance. If I were in his place, I'd probably assume that crashing at 30 mph hurt me more than falling to the ground hurt the pedestrian.

If not for his helmet, we wouldn't be having this discussion right now because there would have been two dead people instead of one.

Sure you can kill or seriously injure someone by knocking them down on a bike. You ever watch football? We cyclists may not be as heavy as tacklers, but we're going faster and chances are we are going to hit someone not nearly as big or with such a rugged skeletal system as a football player.

To say it's going to hurt the cyclists more is just not true.

"The aim of science is to make difficult things understandable in a simpler way; the aim of poetry is to state simple things in an incomprehensible way. The two are incompatible."